Mean Streets lives up to its name since the entire movie is about the life of Charlie and how he goes about covering for his friend Johnny, who’s a bit of a loose cannon. Charlie also has a huge issue with working for his uncle doing whatever illicit jobs he’s given while still trying to be a good man. It’s kind of ironic that his uncle tells him “honorable men go with honorable men” since his uncle is a loan shark and a political fixer. There’s not a lot of honor on the mean streets when it’s more about survival and who’s willing to do what to whom.
Honor is an ideal that doesn’t always mesh with survival.
10. This was the first film in which Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese worked together.
Obviously they would go on to collaborate in a lot of films after this. In fact it’s hard not to think of one or the other when you see their name on a film.
9. The music in the film took up half the budget.
There wasn’t much of a budget to begin with and getting the permission to use the music took a heavy toll on the expenses.
8. The movie was shot in New York and LA.
They couldn’t afford to shoot every scene in New York so they had to move it to LA for a good deal of the movie.
7. The Catholic church was the same one used in The Godfather.
This is the same church where Connie’s first child was baptized, where Michael Corleone is standing over the child while his capos are busy eliminating the heads of the other families.
6. The inspiration for Johnny came from Scorsese’s uncle.
Apparenlty his uncle had a few scrapes with the law as well, which meant that he had a lot of source material to pull from.
5. De Niro was offered any part he wanted.
Once Harvey Keitel was brought on to play Charlie, Scorcese decided to convince him to play Johnny since it would be more believable.
4. Scorcese was glad that Warner Bros. bought the movie.
He believed that they had all the good gangster movies so it would be possible to get the film pushed and given a lot more attention.
3. The F-word was used about 50 times in this film.
At the time this film came out that was a record, but it was broken just a couple of months later when The Last Detail came out. Since then fifty seems par for the course with a lot of movies.
2. The film was banned by the BBC in the 1980’s.
The excessive use of foul language and violence was simply too much and the network refuse to air it.
1. The film wasn’t that popular when it first came out.
Scorcese attributed this to the fact that Warner Bros. didn’t really promote the film all that much. It eventually became popular and achieved a moderate fan base but it took time to build.
I had to look twice to recognize Keitel.
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